Ruefulness: Regrets of the Moments Before
by SecretDisguise
Summary: Dolor is a rebel policeman, against the corrupt government he was forced to serve. Now, he has his pistol aimed at the head of an important political figure. Pulling the trigger, he thought he finished the job. But the dead man's mercenary pushes him into a happy painting, and, it turns out, that there's a hole in the wall. Dolor falls, but where does he land? Who does he land as?
1. To Raise Up The Hatchet

**Author's Note: Having started to run out of ideas for the next chapter of both "Instantaneous" and "Dependence," this is what I do when I run out of ideas, yet try to publish something: A Happy Tree Friend story. But, as hard as it may seem, there's a moral here. The moral would be so relevant in both the starting chapters and the ending chapters. This story is intended to be kept short, but it might grow long if the plot demands length. So, enjoy, and try to actually learn something.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything Mondo Mini Shows owns, especially Happy Tree Friends. Anything from the author, is owned by the author. Anything from someone, is owned by that someone.  
**

* * *

**Chapter 1: To Raise Up The Hatchet**

* * *

The daring officer opened the door. He saw the man that he was looking for. Without hesitation, he pulled out his gun and pointed his pistol at the man sitting on his chair.

"Freeze!" Dolor, the policeman, yelled at the man. "I've had enough with your antics! It's the end of the line for you!"

The man tried to get away from his chair, but Dolor aimed low, shot a bullet, and hit the man's foot. And with so much pain on his foot, the man could not bear to even crawl, let alone walk.

Dolor was not Superman. Superman was just a fictional superhero in a series of comics. But Dolor was real, yet ordinary; unless one would have the mind to think that a police uniform would make someone a superhero. And he could not believe he would make it this far. He was able to kill or at least subdue every person who did their best to guard the man he was looking for. He was already in the room of a really important man in the government. And, even further, the man was already on his knees, hands up, and Dolor's pistol was aimed at the man's head. Blood flowed from the man's foot, flowing to the checkered floor.

Dolor slammed the door behind him. "Any last words, Barcane?" Dolor said angrily, with his trigger finger on the trigger, waiting for Barcane's words to come out.

At first, silence. Then, before Dolor became impatient, Barcane began to speak softly.

"You know, don't you," Barcane began, "that you call this governance...corrupt. I know who you are: Dolor E. Arten, a policeman who eventually would officially become affiliated with what my higher leaders call 'a rebellion.' Your only living relative is your nephew, Manuel, who is only six years of age. And, according to what you say about your nephew, you treat him as if he was your son. But, back to the topic—Your rebellion of yours—I could not believe at first that this group can point out the flaws of this administration—All the contradictions, all the hypocrisy of this government."

Then, for a moment, he stopped.

"Is that it?!" Barcane shouted impatiently at the quiet Barcane.

"No, it's not done." Barcane told him quietly. "If you want current locations of your other targets, go ahead, it's in my cabinet to your left. If you want to bomb a secret outpost or two, they're in my laptop. And I guessed you would have found my password already long after you kill me.

But there's one thing out of the all the ideals that I hold on to: To not get even with someone. To not take revenge. Even if you call me an 'evil man,' look what I say. I say to you 'Thank you.' Even if I'm armed with a revolver, I only use it for fun when I go with my friends to see how many flying pigeons we can hit."

Silence filled the room. It's likely that the police surrounding Barcane's large mansion was already calling for backup. What the police were shouting to Dolor, he could not understand. He was right in the middle of the mansion. And the room he was in contained no windows, and only one, wooden door; the only way to go in to and out from the room.

"But I'm also intelligent. Make one wrong move and you're falling already. And now, this is one of those moments that could either make you or break you. You can shoot me and escape alone—if you can. Or you can just tie me up, and escape with me.

"Your consequences? Bind me and I'll tell you everything, as long as you swear that I be kept alive until I die a natural death. You might get some bad points from your other friends who belong to your group, but in the end...you know what will happen.

"Shoot me, however, a beacon will immediately be sent the moment you kill me. This beacon will send messages to about twenty of my mercanaries. They are state-of-the-art special forces. The moment that beacon's off, my mercenaries will do their best to kidnap the selected members of your group—and, as it turns out, most of the ones marked to be kidnapped are also your friends.

"But first, moments after you kill me, a mercenary somewhere in this house will be notified that you shot me, and he will push you to one of the paintings in the room."

Dolor looked around the room. There were only two paintings. One of them depicted a sad, gruesome night, with no moon in sight. The one on the other side depicted a happy morning. On a hill was a tree as the foreground, and little friends played around the tree.

"So what, Barcane?" Dolor yelled at him. "Part of your last will is to make my backside stained with dry paint? I don't think that's logical—"

"That's not the whole thing, Dolor. Before he will push you to the wall, he would inject something into your body. Only _I _know what it will do to you; no exceptions. You'll be the second one to find out what the serum will do to you, but this time, you'll be the victim of the serum.

Barcane coughed, and out of his mouth was drops of blood.

"I can't believe I'm still alive," he said weakly, "so I don't have much time to tell you everything. But this, I can tell you: Once you get pushed to the painting, the painting will flip—yes, there's a hole in the wall, behind one of the paintings—and you'll fall into an underground world that I replicated. It was not of my own imagination, but, because of the technology me leaders gave me, I was able to duplicate a world filled with ironies: It will be beautiful, yet ugly; you'll be happy, but the next second, you'll be bleeding so much blood; every nice thing you do might end up a mean thing to another."

"What kind of a world is that!?" Dolor hollered at him, impatiently waiting for the proper time to kill Barcane.

"You'll know when you get there, Dolor." Barcane told the mad man. "So, Dolor, pick and choose. What would it be? Keep me alive? Or make me quickly die?"

Dolor, who was filled with so much hatred against Barcane and his friends and whoever sides with him, made no second thought. He pulled the trigger, but the pistol only clicked.

"That's your choice?" Barcane said as he snickered evilly. "Score one for the so-called 'corrupt' government, then. I'll just activate the beacon on my own."

He put down his left hand and reached under his fancy suit for something that Dolor knew in almost an instant: A trigger to activate a beacon.

Then, Dolor heard a beep coming from Barcane. "Too late, Dolor," Barcane wickedly told the mad policeman.

"No!" Dolor shouted. "I'm going to avoid your slaves, Barcane! But first, I'll just reload and shoot at you! It's as easy as one—"

Dolor got his last clip and put speedily put it into his pistol.

"Two!"

Then, Dolor rapidly readied his gun, in spite the fact that it seemed that he was too late to stop Barcane from making his plan come true. Yet, in all this noise that Dolor was making, Barcane remained eerily silent.

"Three!"

He pulled the trigger. A bloody hole immediately appeared in Barcane's head. His eyes rolled. He made a thud as he fell to the floor. He was officially dead.

In that moment, thoughts of what the future would become flooded his head. He could imagine the headlines on the newspapers: "Barcane Found Murdered In His House!" "Rogue Policeman, One Million Dollars On His Head!" "Rebellion Rises As The Great Barcane Dies!" He could imagine how long the line would be at the venue of his funeral. He imagined how long—or short—the eulogies would be, since many other influential figures would possibly be there to speak of how many things he did for the government. He imagined the respect he would get from his peers when he came back to his outpost a popular man. Yet, these were only imaginations. It was up to him and other circumstances to make his imaginations come true.

He dashed to the only door in the room, yet when he opened it, a mysterious-looking man was in front of him. The only thing he could see was that a mask was covering all of his face, except for his eyes; for the mystery man quickly turned his head to the other way around.

"It's a good thing I do not plan to kill you," the man told him.

The man forced Dolor to the front of the happy painting. "It's also a good thing that this _mixture _isn't planned to kill you," continued the man, "although that's all I know about it."

"You're the mercenary Barcane's been talking about, aren't you?" Dolor said to him grimly, trying to resist him, even though he knew the man was stronger and more powerful than him.

"Yes, rebel," the mercenary answered. "Had the beacon not activated, you would be an infamous man in the society who wills to obey our ideals. I'm here to make sure you won't be infamous. And my other friends also got the message—they're making sure their targets won't become infamous too. And—surprise!—they'll also be injected with a mixture similar to the one you'll get."

"No! You can't do this to me!" Dolor yelled to the man's face.

"Of course I can," the mercenary said as he took out a syringe and forcibly forced the inscrutable serum into Dolor's arm. All the while, he was able not to become deaf as Dolor screamed shouts and yells of pain.

"Before you I push you into the bright painting and into a dark fall," the mercenary told Dolor, "let me tell you this: Barcane told me bits of information about what you're falling into. First, it's bright, but it would also be a gruesome world. Second, it would be a whole lot like a cartoon...yet, if Barcane was alive and well—since you killed him—and was able to see what happens in the world below, he would laugh so hard, we might need to bring him to a hospital. He likes black comedy so much, as you well know. The ones who will populate the world below will almost get killed everyday; good thing they won't be dead because of what Barcane put into that world. And finally, Barcane ordered me to give you a saying he wants me to say to you:

"'You'll start your fall a man, but, you'll end your fall in a childish, yet horrible way; for your outside is radically changed, yet what's in your head and heart will change only a little...if you choose to.'"

"What in the world does that mean!?" Dolor asked him with unforbearing.

"He told me what it means, but you'll find out the hard way."

The mercenary pushed Dolor so strongly, he almost flew right through the painting, and the only thing he saw after going through the painting was darkness. He started falling, and screamed all the way down. When will his fall end, he did not know.


	2. Desperado

**Desperado**

* * *

_How long have I been falling? _Dolor thought. Ever since the mercenary pushed Dolor and made him fall, Dolor wondered how far was this world. He finally got tired of screaming—his throat was already aching from all the lengthy shouting. In fact, he got used to the fall. The nagging thought in his head was, _How long have I been falling?_

He did not know how long he fell so far. It has been seconds, minutes, maybe even hours of falling. Or maybe he was not falling at all. Maybe he was floating in mid-air because of anti-gravity technology, and he did not know it before. Besides, Barcane was not just a rich man, and he was not just a smart man. He was one of the richest men on the entire planet, and he was also one of the smartest men in the world. Dolor thought it was a waste for Barcane to be called things like that if his purposes only fulfilled himself and the selfish desires of the corrupt administration that he was serving.

Or even worse—or better—could he be dreaming all along? _Nah; it's too real. I'm falling, yet I'm not waking up. Falling is supposed to wake you up, isn't it? _So, he concluded that he was not dreaming at all.

Dolor was so used to the falling, he could think straight. But now, he felt a little sleepy. So he closed his eyes, for what started out to be a little slumber. Then, it became a deep sleep.

* * *

Dolor felt sleepy as he woke up...on something cushy? It felt a lot like a pillow and a bed. Was it his bed? Was he in a bedroom? _His _bedroom? And, if it was his bedroom, was he in his house?

He saw the sun, slowly rising and shining with all its light and warmth, through the window. Was it all a crazy dream, fueled by Dolor's intense hatred against the domineering government? Thoughts and feelings _can _make someone actually dream, can they not?

Yet, that "dream"—that is, if it was a dream—was too long. Dreams did not last for days, weeks, and months. Dolor had been away from home for too long. He was so fervent on overthrowing a corrupt leadership, that he had never thought about going back home. There was no room for passivity when it came to rebelling against such an impure and shady system.

But, if it was a dream, then, did that mean that such a government did not exist around him anymore? It was up to him to find out.

Dolor got up and sat on the bed, but he felt a little smaller than he used to be, even though everything else appeared to make him think he was the same height.

In fact, his surroundings did not look familiar to him at all. It all looked real, yes, but the colors seemed too vibrant for him. It all seemed like he was in a cartoon world. Even the things he saw inside the room appeared to come straight out from a kids' show.

Then, Dolor thought about what Barcane said about the world below the large mansion. _Beautiful, yet ugly_. Maybe he meant that it was beautiful to kids, yet ugly to some adults like Dolor. To him, the things around him and their color were cheap and cheesy, in spite spending most of his childhood years appreciating the "cheap" and "cheesy" things and colors.

As he stood up, he noticed that his hands were not his hands. They were not hands at all. They were covered with very light brown fur. And he felt something coming out of his mouth.

"Huh?" Dolor began, but his voice was not his voice. It sounded very deep and hollow.

Dolor began to look down and he realized that he was wearing a crimson bathrobe, and a red hat.

"What is this?!" Dolor shouted in his new yet strange voice, "Identity theft? Oh, I'm going to destroy Barcane's friends all right!...When I figure out a way to get out of here; but, first thing's first."

He did his best to find out where the nearest mirror is. Yet, he felt like he was in a maze, since this house was not his house. The floors and ceilings he saw; they were not his. It was awkward to see a house with cartoon colors, and toony furniture.

Finally, he reached the bathroom of the house. And, as Dolor expected, the bathroom also appeared toony, with the colors, the slightly strange structures of the bath tub, the shower, the sink—even the walls, the floor, and the ceiling looked very colorful and saturated.

Dolor walked in front of the mirror, and he was clearly surprised with what he saw. He saw a face covered with very light brown fur; big eyes with Pacman-shaped pupils; two front teeth that stayed outside his mouth, no matter how much he tried to put it inside; bear-like ears on the near the top of his head; and—the most annoying of all to him—a heart-shaped, pink nose.

_Beautiful, yet ugly._

He was surely mad at Barcane and his antics. But Dolor rested on the fact that at least that he was not some kind of mutated man. Yet, being a toony, anthropomorphic bear felt awkward. He was not used to being some kind of character that resembled someone or something from an old, television show for children.

Then, he remembered the serum. Did the serum turn him into this...cartoon creature? Dolor was not sure, but it seemed to be the most likely answer. But, Dolor began to wonder. Was Barcane going to punish him in that colorful world even with Barcane dead? If so, then it did seem inappropriate. Dolor thought the best Barcane could go for was to put him in front of a firing squad or put him under extreme torture. Being annoyed by a childish environment was almost nothing compared to the ideal punishment. But, then again, Barcane was not always what he seems to be. He was a man full of surprises. What kind of Barcane's surprises would await Dolor in this innocent world?

He looked away from the mirror and stared at the wall on the other side, thinking about the matter at hand. If this is what happened to him as he got injected and fell, it can also mean similar things to his other twenty or so friends. Would they also be transformed into cartoon-like characters like him?

But, something was tugging him in his mind. It seemed familiar. He looked back to the mirror—to himself—trying to figure out what it meant. Then, it hit him. It was too familiar to him. He knew _her _too well.

"Cassandra!" Dolor shouted in despair.

* * *

The door flew open. A masked man—another mercenary—came in with a handcuffed woman in what seems to be some kind of slightly tattered uniform. Uniform that the masked man recognized as a rebel uniform.

"Where did you put Dolor, you madman!?" the woman shouted at the top of her lungs.

"I'm not going to tell you until you get there," the masked mercenary said to the woman. "In fact, I don't know who this Dolor guy is. I'm sorry, ma'am, but I haven't read the "Rebellion News" lately, so Dolor isn't familiar to me. So you either stay a good girl, or I'll have to resort to torturing you."

"Where's Dolor!?" the woman continued to yell, struggling to get out of her handcuffs, although she knew she can not get out of such strong and sturdy handcuffs.

"Barcane waited for this day where he can get the upper hand and use it to destroy a big part of your enormous insurrection," the masked mercenary said to the woman, ignoring her shouts and yells, "even if he knew he won't live to see the day."

"If you want information," the woman insisted, "the only information you'll get—until you tell me where you put Dolor—is that my real first name is Cassandra, and I'm also involved with what you call an 'insurrection.' And the reason why we rebel against you and your so-called 'caring and enlightened' government is that it's—"

"—it's not caring and enlightened, you say," the mercenary interrupted. "If it wasn't so caring and enlightened, then I would be in the position of a flunky in a little office rather than the well-honored rank of being a mercenary."

"Which is just a fancy term for 'an upgraded, enhanced, and egoistical flunky,'" Cassandra chimed in with anger in her face.

The mercenary abruptly pushed her to the dark painting the room, with his hands having a strong grip on Cassandra's wrists.

"It looks like you're one of the few educated rebels in your clan of yours," the masked man teased. "If you were on our side, I'd take your jargon as a nice joke to make things a little happier. But, since I take that as an insult, I'll have to force your punishment on you."

The man reached for his breast pocket and brought out a vaccine with pink serum inside the vaccine. "To be honest," the mercenary said truthfully, "I don't know what this thing will do to you. Only Barcane knows. But he's dead. And that guy who killed Barcane..."

Cassandra gasped in shock. "Dolor!?"

"So Dolor is the murderer, eh?" the man told her. "At least I know the name of the man who got injected with the first out of many serums—personally delivered by my friend Evans, I guessed. I seriously need to keep up with what's going on around me." Changing the topic, he continued, "Well...that Dolor guy got injected with a serum similar to that."

"Is that a death serum!?" Cassandra shouted at the man's masked face. She clearly did not show any respect for the man, with hatred being obvious in her eyes.

"The only thing Barcane told me about this serum," the mercenary quietly said to her, "is that it doesn't kill the victim. Anything else about it—I really don't know. But I'm ordered to force this mysterious serum into your bloodstream. Then, after that, Barcane told me to lead you into a so-called 'happy town.'"

Without another word, the mercenary forcibly injected the serum into Cassandra's arm.

Immediately, she screamed in pain—something the mercenary expected.

"I would really want to waste you," the masked man told her as he pushed her closer to the happier-looking painting in the room, "but orders are orders, ma'am."

When the words left his mouth, he pushed Cassandra and she tripped through the painting and fell into a seemingly endless fall. The yell from Cassandra's mouth seemed to last a long time. Until it stopped.

By then, the masked man fixed the painting so it looked normal again—as if there was nothing suspicious about it. He wanted it to be like that for the rest of the confrontations that his other friends would encounter.

He got his walkie-talkie as he walked towards the door. "Hey, this is Wilson, guys," the man reported. "_Beta parma _is out for the count. Or maybe it's the other way around...like _Parma beta..._I'm not good in Latin terms, OK?"

As he opened the door, he saw the sniper rifle lying on the floor. The sniper rifle that he got when he disarmed Cassandra.

"At least we have one more sniper rifle in our arsenal...if you're looking at the positives, then we have one more rifle in our hands. Looks like we can employ one more sniper to get one of the hard-to-get targets..."

Then, he noticed something unique and strange about the rifle. What it really was, he could not properly say or describe. He hastily pushed the button on his walkie-talkie and said, "This is Wilson! I think you should start putting more vaccines on the barrels of rifles like these and less vaccines on the hands of our ninja-like men. At least we'll have cleaner hands in the end...if you know what I mean."

* * *

"Oh great," Dolor stuttered in panic, "she's going to be the next if they get her! I hope she doesn't freak out when she sees that she's some kind of cartoon character! It won't be a pretty sight if she _does _freak out...oh, what am I going to do?"

Then, he wondered. What was he going to do here? Try to live or try to survive? He walked out the bathroom and went to one of the windows. He saw a town with colorful buildings not far from where he was standing.

"Maybe I ought to hit town first," Dolor talked to himself, as he left his house.

As he headed for the town, he looked at his surroundings. It all seemed so artistic, colorful, and beautiful. _To a kid, that is,_ Dolor thought to himself. To him, it all looked cheesy. But he ought to appreciate the place—he did not know how long he was going to stay here. Hours? Days? Weeks? Or was he trapped here for the rest of his life?

As he was thinking about these things, he heard a scream. And it was not him screaming. _That's surely not good news, _Dolor thought alarmingly.

He looked back quickly. What he saw was a cartoon creature that looked like a pink chipmunk, with a big, red bow on her head. She was running around in circles on a patch of flowers. And she was screaming, maybe even crying.

"Cassandra?" Dolor asked.

But clearly, the pink chipmunk kept on screaming. "Aaah! I'm some kind of toon!" she kept on yelling as she ran, going nowhere in particular.

Was this the brave and daring Cassandra, who would go in dangerous missions for the rebellion, putting her own life—and even the rebellious group she was a part of—on the line? Was this really the Cassandra who was not scared of death threats from the powerful, yet corrupt government? If that was so, why was she scared and yelling like a helpless damsel?

But Dolor had no time to dwell on the questions. All he had to do was to run to her, comfort her, and to stop her from crying...somehow.


End file.
